1st December 1990

[alton-royal]

http://www.readingfc.co.uk/page/NewsDet ... 52,00.html

Thankyou sir john!

[Ian Royal]

Thanks for everything.

[leww_rfc]

^ sums it up! we'd be nowhere near where we are now! Thankyou.

[winchester_royal]

Absolute legend.

[chilipepper91]

lad

[Royalee]

Thanks for the first 16 years John.

[pea]

Legend

[blueroyals]

Sir John's contribution to the club can never fully be repaid.

His "contribution" (invested capital) was fully repaid about 4 seasons ago in my opinion! the cheek of putting that in the article.

[leww_rfc]

Thanks for the first 16 years John.

He's been here for 20 years m9.

[1871 Royal]

Thank you for saving the football club that we all love.

[Davyc]

great man, great job done!

[floyd__streete]

Cheers Sir Madj for having the floppiest hair in football administration. Thanks also for hiLOLarious moments including your speech atop a cab in the Market Place when we got promoted and for a similar drunken rant in the toilets of Nue Valbonne back in '97 when your players gatecrashed the Maiden Erlegh 6th form xmas do. I also remember you referring to Port Vale United and looking forward to our trip to Maine Road.....several years after it had been demolished

[Alan Partridge]

Cheers Sir Madj for having the floppiest hair in football administration. Thanks also for hiLOLarious moments including your speech atop a cab in the Market Place when we got promoted and for a similar drunken rant in the toilets of Nue Valbonne back in '97 when your players gatecrashed the Maiden Erlegh 6th form toilets. I also remember you referring to Port Vale United and looking forward to our trip to Maine Road.....several years after it had been demolished

Could well be FLTLR.

[Jackson Corner]

Interesting we played Fulham that day look whats happened to them since the chairman took over? I prefer to compare us to Swindon and Oxford and look where they are now? Whatever people might think we are very fortunate to have SJM as our chairman I dread to think where we would be now. Thank you

[Harpers So Solid Crew]

Ticks the report card,

could have done better

Would be great if all clubs were run like RFC, but they are not, so have doubts about the longer term success of the strategy.

If so many are so happy, why do so many look ahead to a new owner, is it because we long to be better than we are, which is always the aim.

[Hampshire Royal]

It would be nice and simple (and great) if spending loads of money guaranteed success. Unfortunately it doesn't. I would have loved it if Madejski had spent big money so that we wcould win the FA Cuo like Pompey. The consequence of doing that helped to drag Pompey into very serious problems. Would it have been worth it? Not for me it wouldn't!!

The way people are talking about 'just going out and buying a good, regular goalscorer', you'd think they were talking about buying shoes or chocalate bars. It just doesn't work like that. I have no doubt that money is available for McD if he could show that a player he wanted would be a valuable addition to the squad, and that he would be better than what we already have. We are in a better position than Pompey are (and a number of other clubs who tried to catch the same cloud as them) largely due to the way the club is being run. Before anyone says that the way Pompey, Leeds, Bradford and Barnsley etc got into difficulties is different to us and we could never be in their position, perhaps they can explain why?

Don't wish too hard for Madejski to get out of the club becasue you may get what you want.

[Gordons Cumming]

I dread to think we're we'd be without his timely intervention.

Well done and thanks.

Oh, and considering he's not a football fan in the true sense makes his achievements even more outstanding.

[Maguire]

Booo get your chequebook out you money man

We'd have been better off with Maxwell

[under the tin]

It would be nice and simple (and great) if spending loads of money guaranteed success. Unfortunately it doesn't.

That statement is not strictlytrue. It's certainly not an absolute.
Only the most seriously deluded Chelsea fans can't see the correlation beetween that clubs ascendency, and the Abramovitch money.
United may have a good pedigree of growing their own, but still, historically, have splashed the cash on the Greenoffs, the Andy Coles, the Roy Keanes, the Berbatovs, and the Rooneys, etc., and none of them came cheap.
I think Arsenal were the first club to pay £100 000 for a player, (Alan Ball, I think). Walcott cost how much?

Conversely, Liverpool have spent relatively heavily over the last few years, and have witnessed, (by their standards) a decline.
I could talk about how much Jack Hayward lavished on Wolves, with virtually no effect. Newcastle turned spending into an artform.
I can remember Tommy Burns "magnificent seven". £3/4M worth of crap.

I think that the lesson is that it is not about how much money is spent, but how wisely it is spent. This is why I believe that the most important signing any club can make is that of its manager.

[Svlad Cjelli]

It would be nice and simple (and great) if spending loads of money guaranteed success. Unfortunately it doesn't.

That statement is not strictlytrue. It's certainly not an absolute.
.......

I think that the lesson is that it is not about how much money is spent, but how wisely it is spent. This is why I believe that the most important signing any club can make is that of its manager.

If you look at the statistics, there's actually a 92% correlation between money spent and league position, which makes it a pretty safe bet but not an assured one. But when you look at the resources of those we'd be competing against (including foreign money, parachute payments and also HMRC money) I don't blame him for not just throwing money at the problem - even if he did have the liquidity now, which he doesn't.

Because the thing that most people seem to be missing is if you spend money to (nearly) guarantee success, you have to keep spending it just to maintain that position - so he'd be committing to open-ended investment and which would inevitably end up in debt.